


On the Ferocity of Sheep

by SecondSilk



Category: Firefly
Genre: Gen, Why can't we be friends ficathon
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2010-07-13
Updated: 2010-07-13
Packaged: 2017-10-10 13:12:33
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 975
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/100155
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/SecondSilk/pseuds/SecondSilk
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>The only thing you're gonna find in New Melbourne is fish and fish related activities, and perhaps a job.</p>
            </blockquote>





	On the Ferocity of Sheep

**Author's Note:**

  * For [Evillittletwit](https://archiveofourown.org/gifts?recipient=Evillittletwit).



They all got off the boat in New Melbourne. The air was thick with stench of fish, but no one wanted to stay on Serenity. Inara set off up the hill to the fancy houses with names and Mal watched her go silently before he headed beyond the markets to find work away from the Alliance trade inspectors. Most work to be found be found in places like these was negotiated quietly in the street. But Mal was trailed by his crew, who were trying so hard to look normal that they looked like Feds, and no one would catch his eye to ask his skills. Only River looked herself; a girl let loose in the rough for the first time in her life: wide-eyed and exclaiming at the clothes and the animals—things that shouldn't've been any of her business.

The job they got was guarding sheep on Circe for people who had more money than they had guns or men trained to use them. It wasn't much, but it was somewhere else. Mal didn't know anything about sheep. River assured him that they were more ferocious than they looked, but he wasn't entirely convinced. He was most happy to be away from New Melbourne and the penetrating smell of fish.

"We evolved from fish," River told them, poking at her dinner sceptically.

"Millions of years ago, though," Mal said.

He cast a questioning glance at Simon, who merely shrugged.

River grinned them. Then pulled the bone from her fish with one twist of her knife. Mal bent his head to his dinner to hide his grin.

They were due to land on Circe early in the morning, and he was planning the job as he washed the dishes late that evening. He decided that Jayne was probably best kept away from the animals. He wondered whether River would do well as a second to walk with the sheep.

"I like animals," she said.

Mal dropped a plate into the soaping water and ended up with water up his arm. He turned around with a scowl.

River was sitting on the table, swinging her legs like she really was a little girl still and not, well, the ship, or some strange creature merely wearing the skin of a woman. She was smiling at him, as if she knew exactly what he was thinking of and was waiting for him to reach the natural conclusion on his own. No one had looked at him quite like that since he'd left his Mama's ranch to join the war.

"You could help instead of staring," he said, holding up the wet dishcloth.

Her gaze turned withering. "If you remove even the smallest part of a balanced system the great gears stop moving and you can't tell up from down."

He blinked.

"It's not my turn," she said.

He rolled his eyes, but turned back to the dirty plates. River was silent for a moment. Mal could almost feel the stillness behind him, although he doubted he'd have been able to hear her moving above the background hum of the engines, had she wanted to be stealthy.

"She will come back," she said, suddenly, as though answering a question.

Mal knew that he had gotten used to this strangeness from her when his immediate reaction was to be comforted rather than confused.

"It's not good to startle a man like that when he's holding a knife," he said, gesturing with the blade he was washing.

"Everything must return to where it was born, at least once before it dies. Or it wanders forever, a lost little mouse."

Mal usually let River talk, because her explanations were often more confusing than letting it lie, but there was a wistfulness in her tone he recognised, like he had recognised that look of his mother's on her face before.

"Is that you?" Mal asked, "Little mouse?"

"I was born here," River told him.

She wasn't looking at him. She didn't seem even to have heard him. She was staring off in the distance, towards the engine room and Serenity's beating heart. Mal blinked away that romantic notion and concentrated again on his chores.

River said, "I'm a bird. Birds hatch. I hatched here." She paused a moment, then corrected herself. "Was hatched here," she said.

"That you were," Mal muttered, mostly to himself. He remembered clearly the kick of confusion when he'd first seen her, pale and skinny and scared, and not any of the more precious things he had been expecting to be in that box. Turned out there was more to her than anyone would guess to look at her, and weren't that always the way.

"Like a sheep," River said.

Mal just managed to say, "Huh?" as he wrung the washcloth out and hung it to dry.

"Followers," River said. "Sheep follow, do as they're told and don't ask questions. You can make them into whatever you want."

Mal turned to her, feigning accusation. "I thought you said they were ferocious."

River grinned at him. "When they want to be," she said.

Mal sighed. He had understood what she'd said about the cows, and had hoped that it was evidence that she knew something about animals. It may simply have been her oddness, though. Now they were going to spend three days with a couple of thousand sheep, and the only shepherd they had was a preacher.

River grinned at him.

"You should go to sleep," she said, solemnly. "Need your rest for the morning."

Mal snorted lightly. "You, too, little one."

He looked forward to seeing her delight in the farm air in the morning. It was not Inara's natural setting at all, so it was just as well that she had stayed with the fish and the traders. Mal had River to tell him about sheep.


End file.
